Bound (Legacy Series Book 4) Read online

  Bound

  Legacy Series Book Four

  Max Ellendale

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Bound: Legacy Series Book Four

  Copyright © 2016 Max Ellendale

  Contributor: J.L. James

  Contributor: R.M. Bruce

  Editor: Deadra Krieger

  Cover Artist: Victoria Miller

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  Max Ellendale

  www.maxellendale.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter One

  "Doctor Fox said you've got a private practice going, is that true?" Beth asked while crunching on a mouthful of granola.

  "Yeah, it's only been official for about a month though and I've seen a few patients. It'll pick up in time." I sipped my coffee while leaning against the front desk. Beth continued munching on her midnight snack.

  Returning to work after the tumultuous trip to Ireland shoved me back into a comfortable routine. With the practice in its infancy, the part-time work at Stormhill didn't seem like much. Now that our mate bonds were solid, my mates seemed less bothered by it as well. Two pulsing tendrils attached to my soul, with me always.

  "Think you'll still work here once you get your own patients?" Beth pressed.

  "Maybe. Probably. I'll have to see how it goes."

  The emergency department remained quiet for the majority of my shift. So much so that I kidnapped a resident for a brief wound care lesson.

  "Dr. Twofeathers, I've finished," said the nervous voice of the newbie.

  "You can call me Shawnee, you know." I broke away from Beth and joined Dr. Nylar in the exam room. "How'd she do, Dagmar?"

  "Oh, just wonderful, my dear. It's feeling better," she said, wiggling her bandaged foot.

  "I'm glad it's less painful." I smiled at the sweet elderly woman and checked the work of the resident while she stood by in fear-ridden silence. I turned to Dr. Nylar and signed off on Dagmar's chart. "Nice work. She's ready for discharge. Have you ever discharged a patient?"

  "Oh goodie-gums." Dagmar began packing her knick-knacks into her purse.

  "Um…no, I…I don't think so," the resident stammered.

  "Review the chart, document your work, and make follow-up recommendations for Dagmar to visit her primary care doctor. All right?" I closed the chart and looked between the women.

  "Yess'm," said Dagmar then clapped her hands affectionately. "Chin up there, deary. I'm not fragile."

  "Okay," Dr. Nylar responded, offering a weak smile.

  "You've scared her to wits. She isn't so intimidating, deary." Dagmar swung her legs off the side of the bed, quite abruptly, then slid into a set of slippers awaiting her feet.

  "I'm not intimidating at all." I smiled and locked my elbow with Dagmar's, guiding her to stand.

  "Now we've silenced her, the poor dear." While we chatted, Dr. Nylar continued to look on with doe-wide eyes. I laughed softly and helped the patient into a wheelchair.

  "Dr. Nylar will find her voice soon enough. She's been a resident for, how long now?" I glanced over at the young doctor.

  "Um…three weeks."

  "Oh! Fresh." Dagmar cackled and slapped her knee. "I'm ready. Set me free."

  "You're on your way." I handed the chart to Dr. Nylar and nodded to the wheelchair. "Her family is in the waiting room. She can hang out there while you do the discharge. If you have any questions, I'll be in my office looking rather bored."

  "Okay," she said, though this time a hint of a laugh met her words. Dagmar clapped and pointed toward the door, whistling a happy tune. I hope I'm as cheerful as she is when I'm eighty.

  I spent the next hour of my shift in the shared office flipping through some of the patient reports from the past few weeks. Nothing unusual, thankfully. I partially expected more random puncture wounds, bloodless deaths, or eviscerated necks. After the pack took care of Izzy a few months ago, all of the strange arrivals seemed to stop. One young vamp caused all that chaos in wolf-protected territory. Hank must've been seething.

  The office phone rang and I picked it up.

  "There's a woman here to see you," Beth's voice erupted from the receiver.

  "A patient?"

  "No. A woman asking for you," the flattened tone in Beth's voice had me worried.

  "I'll be right there."

  Save for the night shift nurses and a few roaming security guards, not much seemed to be going on. Dagmar was our only patient of the night and she was now gone. I joined Beth at the front desk. She still had the receiver in her hand as she stared at the woman a few feet away.

  "What are you doing?" I asked her.

  "What? Oh…" She hung up the phone. "She says her name is Ileana." Beth nodded toward the petite woman seated by herself in the waiting room. A puffy white ski jacket made her seem even smaller. I left the desk and joined the stranger.

  "Can I help you?"

  "Hmm…" The woman stood. Her mousey-brown hair tumbled over her jacket as she moved. "It's good to see you again. I've been waiting for you."

  "For me? I'm sorry, do I know you?" My brow furrowed as I wracked my brain trying to place her. Had she been a patient before? Was she a member of the Sept?

  "Not yet." Ileana took a step toward me, looking me up and down once before slipping her hands into her jacket pockets. "You owe me something."

  "What?" I shook my head. The woman, now an uncomfortable foot away from me, stood at least an inch shorter. Her focus remained on my ID badge.

  "Doctor Twofeathers." A smile curled her copper-tinted lips. "You owe me a childe." The stranger dragged out the "I" sound as if she'd stolen it from the drawl of a southerner.

  "A child?" Something tugged at the center of my stomach. A lurch of apprehension. Something was wrong, off about this woman. Ileana lifted her gaze to mine. Her nearly translucent violet-gray eyes snared mine into a stare that glued my feet to the floor. Someone screamed in my head, my sight tunneled and it finally hit me. Move. My thoughts shouted. Move, now! I obeyed and in a simultaneous motion, ripped myself from the gaze and stepped back. "You're a goddamn leech. Get out of here," I demanded, keeping my voice as low as possible. I trained my gaze on the collar of her jacket, my hands balled into tight fists. Don't look at her. Don't look. My legs twitche
d with eagerness, ready to run but I knew it would be futile. In a hospital filled with vulnerable humans, my calmness meant their safety.

  "Very good," she spat. "I am Vampire. And you owe me a childe."

  "I owe you nothing. Leave." I clenched my teeth, frantically searching inward to summon my pack.

  "You gave the order. You are indebted to me—" Ileana took a step closer but paused mid-phrase at the exact moment I sensed the growing presence of my mates. "I will return." Ileana's gaze flicked toward the entrance. She turned on her heel and exited without another word. The image of darkness swallowing her white jacket as she disappeared into the night imprinted itself in my mind.

  "Doctor T," Beth's panic-stricken voice shook me from the stupor. "We've got a gunshot wound coming in. Two minutes."

  "Shit, okay." I took a few deep breaths. "Notify the OR and get a crash team ready."

  "Got it."

  Doctor Nylar bolted down the hall nearly crashing into me while holding her pager in her hand. Her dilated pupils darkened her normally blue eyes.

  "Just relax and follow my directions. We'll get through it," I reassured her as I tossed on the yellow gown over my scrubs.

  "Ah!" Someone cried out from behind us, both Dr. Nylar and I spun around just in time to see one of the nurses running to the entrance of the emergency room. A man stumbled in holding his neck. Blood spattered the floor around him as he collapsed into the waiting arms of the nurse.

  "Doctor Twofeathers!" the nurse shouted. "We need a gurney!"

  "Go." I ushered the sprinting technicians toward the man. Together we lifted him onto the gurney and raced him into a room.

  "We've got a spurter!" A male tech called out as a gush of fresh blood spewed from the wound.

  I smashed a handful of gauze against his throat, only then noting that his entire neck and shoulder had been ripped away.

  "This is not our gunshot. Where'd he come from?" With pressure on the wound, staff rushed around me to hook the man up to monitors.

  "No idea. He walked in this way."

  "He's completely blown out."

  "Torn is more like it."

  "I'm surprised he walked anywhere."

  "His pressure's dropping."

  With my focus on the man, there was no telling who said what but it didn't matter. We were losing him quickly. "Nylar, hold pressure here." The resident stepped in and I ducked under an IV bag to shout out more orders. "Get two units of O-neg ready and notify the OR of an arrival."

  "He's crashing!"

  I shoved my way through another batch of arms and began chest compressions. Monitors screamed warnings through the ER.

  "Our bus is here!" Beth nearly screamed over the commotion.

  "Nylar, take over compressions. We've got to stop the bleed." I swung myself under the end of the gurney with unprecedented agility. There was no time for running in circles.

  "Prep the paddles."

  Nylar took over compressions while a nurse bagged the man. I slid my fingers into the gaping wound, feeling around for the source of the bleed. It was too messy, too shredded to see anything. That's when it happened, my palm began to burn with the familiar sear of a spontaneous heal. I slapped the bloody towels on top of my gloved hand in hope of stifling the indigo glow that would undoubtedly follow.

  This time something different happened.

  Slippery flesh wriggled beneath my fingertips, reminding me a worm on a hook, and then something snapped together like an elastic band. What the hell? Please don't glow, please don't glow. I yanked my hand away just in time to interrupt a full heal. I could explain an artery repair, but there was no way I could explain the miraculous healing of a ripped out throat. "Got it," I called out for a cover.

  "He's stabilizing," Dr. Nylar called out and stopped compressions. The nurse continued artificial respiration for the man a bit longer until his pulse and breathing restored.

  "Clean him up and get him to the OR. Nylar, you stay with this." I rolled off the soiled gloves and gown with the help of one of the nurses who pulled another set of coveralls on me right after.

  As soon as my footfalls neared the entrance, EMTs burst through the door with the next patient. A woman straddled the gurney, holding a thick patch of blood-soaked dressing to the man's chest.

  "What happ—" My words fell away when I caught sight of an orangeish-red blur rush in the door behind the party of first responders. Vanessa stood, wide-eyed but steady, under the flashing EXIT sign. Her gaze met mine briefly before I was forced to pull away.

  "Gunshot wound to the chest. Self-inflicted," a medium-build police officer answered me as he followed the gurney and me into the next room. Two of the nurses who assisted in the previous emergency joined me. "His name is John."

  The man on the table blinked his eyes sluggishly as he focused on the bright lights above us. He looked at me, his face covered in blood.

  "John, my name is Shawnee. Can you tell me what happened?" I went about my usual script, attempting to engage the patient to keep him conscious. He moved his mouth but said nothing. The EMT rolled off the gurney as we lifted John onto the exam table.

  "Pulse is stable," said a female nurse as she continued to hook him up to the monitors. With only the two nurses in the room, moving around was much easier. I lifted the dressing to inspect the injury. In the center of his torn t-shirt, blood seeped from a circular wound.

  "It looks like it angled toward his shoulder. We need to turn him to check for an exit." On my count, we lifted the patient who groaned feebly. Sure enough, he had a corresponding hole just above his scapula. I felt around the wound to assure the bullet fragments hadn't remained. My finger slipped clean around it. "Let's get him to the OR. Justin, can you tell the police that the bullet passed through? They'll want to retrieve it."

  "Sure, Doc."

  "Hey John, you're going to be all right. We're going to fix you up, okay?" I moved up beside the man while the nurse, Sara, covered the entry wound. John looked at me; his deep brown eyes shimmered under the florescent lights as a single tear streaked down the side of his face. He watched me, a silent plea for… I don't know what, lingered somewhere in his stare.

  This man didn't want to be okay.

  I patted his hand and he gave my fingertips a squeeze. "We'll get you some help." At that, he closed his eyes and his breathing seemed to steady.

  I stepped away and the charge nurse followed me. "He'll need a full psych eval and a hold after that. Full one-to-one." I rolled off the gloves and tossed them into the biohazard bin as the nurses continued to prep John.

  "He got lucky," she commented.

  "I'm not sure he thinks so."

  "Sad."

  "Yeah."

  With that, she returned to tend to the patient while I removed the second bloody gown of the night. Both patients stabilized and moved on to their next phases of treatment as I mopped the blood off my sneakers. My scrubs hadn't fared much better.

  "You're bloody," Beth's voice pulled me from my thoughts as I returned to the nurses' station. "Done saving lives for the moment?"

  When I looked up, Beth sat in her usual chair and beside her sat Vanessa, perched precariously on Beth's desk with her legs crossed at the ankles. In her black skinny jeans, ballet flats, and barely-there sweater, her appearance made for a stark contrast to the blues worn by the rest of us. I'd forgotten that she turned up in the middle of a double crisis but the excitement of her presence sent a rush of heat to my face.

  "I'm done for now," I answered Beth and moved toward Vanessa, stopping a few steps away when I remembered my condition. "What are you doing here, baby?"

  "You called me." She lifted her chin in greeting, though her gaze lingered on the splotch of blood smeared on the side of my pants.

  "I…um." Had I? I almost forgot the reason why.

  "Baby? Hang on a second here." Beth dropped her feet down from the desk and sat forward.

  "I…er, need to change." I looked between them. A smirk met my lips at Beth's re
sponse. "I'll be right back. Want a tour?" I cocked a brow at Vanessa. There was no way I was going to leave her alone with Beth knowing the onslaught of prying questions that would follow.

  "Mhmm." Vanessa slipped from the desk and followed me, offering Beth a sugary-sweet smile. Beth stared after us, her mouth hanging half-open. Sometimes she reminded me very much of Xany. I led Vanessa back to my office and left her standing in the doorway.

  "I'll be right back, okay? I can't walk around contaminated. Don't leave." I blew her a kiss and bound toward the locker room.

  "I won't." She grinned a bit menacingly. Oh brother.

  After a quick wash and a new set of scrubs, I made my way back to the office. With everything that had happened tonight, my brief encounter with the leech seemed to pale in comparison.

  Vanessa sat perched on my desk not unlike she had on Beth's. I wondered, humorously, if she had a thing against chairs. The door clicked shut behind me and I finally offered her a proper greeting. She wrapped her arms around me as I kissed her, a light purr rising from her chest.

  "That was pretty impressive. I've never seen you do that before." She broke the kiss, her hands resting on my waist.

  "Do what? Work?" I laughed softly.

  "Save humans."

  "Well… they are at a slight disadvantage to the rest of us. Figured I'd do a bit of good."

  "You do a lot of good," she said, kissing me again right after.

  "I didn't expect to see you here tonight." I stroked her cheek with my thumb, smiling at the healthy glow she carried once again. The last few months nearly destroyed her. Happiness filled me as I focused on our mate bond throbbing steadily beside Mal's. Our invisible links perceived only by its sharers.

  "We felt you summon. Caden said you were okay, and so did Mal but I couldn't just leave it at that. Not after feeling your need."

  "I wouldn't expect anything less of you, now would I?" I smiled and she tilted her head, a playful grin spread across her ruby lips.

  "What happened?"

  "I…don't really know, actually. A leech showed up in the ER acting all leechy and a few minutes later a guy walks in with a torn out throat. We've definitely still got a vampire problem, even with Izzy gone."